Forming a dynamic duo on the court, Physics teacher Mr. O & AVID teacher Mr Lee helped their team win a basketball championship in a 30+ league in Japantown.
The path to a championship was not easy for the 2 teachers as their team had to beat 7 teams who were all part of randomly drafted teams. During the playoffs, Mr. O & Lee’s team faced elimination 3 weeks in a row but were able to win 4 straight games in order to claim the championship. The season started back in October of 2024, but because their team kept winning to not get eliminated, the season didn’t finish until the January of 2025.
The 2 teachers planned playing together during the summer, when Mr O. mentioned to Mr. Lee that he wanted to get into better shape after losing the seniors vs faculty basketball game. So Mr Lee mentioned that he regularly played in a 30+ league team in Japantown and invited Mr O to join.
Both Mr. O & Mr Lee enjoyed the opportunity to play basketball with each other. Mr. O says, “Coach Lee is a great guy and a great teammate. On the court, I would screen for him all the time to help him score.”
Mr. Lee said, “My favorite part of playing with Mr. O was how good of a teammate he is, always communicating and doing the dirty work like defense and rebounding. Everyone wants a Mr.O on their team.Usually you only see your colleagues at work, but to be able to play with him was a great experience.
Another aspect of the league that seemed to go well was how well their team played together, especially most of them playing together for the first time. According to Mr. Lee, the team won their first 6 games by an average of 20 points. He said “ Each game was kind of a breeze. But in the 7th game, we played against the other undefeated team in the league, and we lost. That was a shock to us. We finished 6-1 on the season.”
Things got more intense for their team during the playoffs. Mr. Lee explained that the playoffs were double elimination (each team needs to lose twice to be eliminated), so after they beat the teams in the 1st and 2nd round, they faced the same team they lost to in the regular season, but lost again.
Luckily, since they had to lose 2 games to be eliminated, they still had more games to play, but needed to win back to back games in order to keep their hopes alive, including having to beat the team they had lost to twice already.
Mr O & Mr Lee were able to beat the first team pretty easily but then played the team they had lost to. According to Mr. Lee, it didn’t look good for their team, saying, “At first, it looked like we were going to lose again, we were down 10 at one point. When there was 30 seconds left, we were down by 5, but we scored 5 points in 15 seconds to tie it. They had an opportunity to win but missed. With 2 seconds left, our teammate hit a full court buzzer beater to win the game.”
This miraculous win forced one more game to determine the champion, but unfortunately, everyone had to wait 3 weeks until the final game because the gym closed for Christmas and New Years. In January the 2 teams played one last game, where Mr Lee and Mr O’s team won by 2 points and claimed the championship.
Although Mr. O enjoyed his time in the league, he can’t rejoin the next season due to being the softball coach this year, & not having enough time to do both. As for Mr. Lee, he plans to continue playing in the league since he has been playing in it for the last 10 years.
